Unusual options activity today,
ranked against normal volume

What makes options activity unusual

Options activity is unusual when a stock trades far more contracts than it normally does. A stock that trades a million contracts on an ordinary day is doing nothing unusual when it trades a million again. A stock that usually trades a few thousand and suddenly trades ten times that is.

Size against its own normal

That is why this list ranks by the multiple and not by raw volume. A hypothetical example with round numbers: a stock that averages 2,000 contracts a day and trades 8,000 today is running at four times normal. That is far more unusual than a mega-cap that averages a million contracts and trades a little more than that. For the stocks with the most raw option volume, see the most traded options list.

Volume against open interest

Volume counts contracts traded today. Open interest counts contracts still open, and it is updated once a day, overnight. When a contract trades more today than its entire open interest, the volume probably includes new positions, unless traders opened and closed the same contracts within the day. The next morning's open interest settles it: if it falls, more contracts were closed than opened.

This test works one contract at a time, so it needs the chain rather than a ticker list. The guide to open interest and volume explains both counts.

Strike, expiry and side

Short-dated, out-of-the-money options cost little and pay only on a large move soon, so heavy buying there carries more information than the same volume in a long-dated contract near the money. Whether a trade went through near the ask (a buyer paying up) or near the bid (a seller accepting less) matters as well. The guide to how to read options flow covers sweeps, blocks and trade side.

Why most unusual volume is not a bet on direction

Heavy volume often comes from routine business:

• Hedges. A fund that owns the stock buys puts to protect it. That put volume says the fund wants insurance, not that it expects a fall.
• Spreads and multi-leg orders. A spread buys one option and sells another in the same order, so part of the volume is an offsetting position.
• Rolls. Traders close a position in a contract near expiry and reopen it further out. The volume doubles without any new view.
• Earnings. Volume rises before a report as traders position for the move, and implied volatility rises with it. After the report volatility usually drops fast, the effect called IV crush.

So check the company's report date before reading anything into a row. When a report is only days away, heavy volume is what you would expect.

How to read a row

• Multiple. How many normal days of volume have traded so far today. The Terminal panel highlights anything at 2x or more, and so does this table.
• Puts. The share of the session's contracts that were puts. Above 50% means more puts than calls; near 100% means the calls barely traded. A high share often means hedging rather than a bearish bet; the put/call ratio guide explains why.
• IV percentile. The share of days in the past year when implied volatility was lower than it is now. A high percentile alongside heavy volume says options are already expensive, whether that volume is buying or selling. A low one means the volume is arriving while options are still cheap. See IV percentile for how it differs from IV rank.
• 30-day IV. The implied volatility the options price for the next 30 days, as an annual percentage.

Then check what the list cannot tell you: which strikes and expiries carried the volume, in the chain, and whether open interest in those contracts rose the next morning, in OI Positioning.

What to look for in an unusual activity scanner

An unusual options activity scanner, sometimes called a screener, usually comes in one of two shapes. Contract lists rank single options by volume divided by open interest. Ticker lists, like this one, rank whole stocks by volume against their normal level.

Contract lists are good at spotting fresh positions, but their top rows tend to be contracts with almost no open interest, where a few dozen contracts produce a huge ratio. Ticker lists miss the contract detail but show which stocks are busy for their size.

Whichever kind you use, the best test is whether you can see its rules. Check what it measures against (today's open interest, a 20-day average or a longer one), which floors it applies, how often it updates, and whether the rows past the first page are paywalled.

This page is free: it shows its 40 rows to everyone, with no signup. It does not show a trade-by-trade tape, sweeps or blocks, or which side of the market a trade hit. For filters by IV rank, volume and earnings, see the options screener filters guide.